RFC 2401              Security Architecture for IP         November 1998


   In summary,
           a) A host MUST support both transport and tunnel mode.
           b) A security gateway is required to support only tunnel
              mode.  If it supports transport mode, that should be used
              only when the security gateway is acting as a host, e.g.,
              for network management.

4.2 Security Association Functionality

   The set of security services offered by an SA depends on the security
   protocol selected, the SA mode, the endpoints of the SA, and on the
   election of optional services within the protocol.  For example, AH
   provides data origin authentication and connectionless integrity for
   IP datagrams (hereafter referred to as just "authentication").  The
   "precision" of the authentication service is a function of the
   granularity of the security association with which AH is employed, as
   discussed in Section 4.4.2, "Selectors".

   AH also offers an anti-replay (partial sequence integrity) service at
   the discretion of the receiver, to help counter denial of service
   attacks.  AH is an appropriate protocol to employ when
   confidentiality is not required (or is not permitted, e.g , due to
   government restrictions on use of encryption).  AH also provides
   authentication for selected portions of the IP header, which may be
   necessary in some contexts.  For example, if the integrity of an IPv4
   option or IPv6 extension header must be protected en route between
   sender and receiver, AH can provide this service (except for the
   non-predictable but mutable parts of the IP header.)

   ESP optionally provides confidentiality for traffic.  (The strength
   of the confidentiality service depends in part, on the encryption
   algorithm employed.)  ESP also may optionally provide authentication
   (as defined above).  If authentication is negotiated for an ESP SA,
   the receiver also may elect to enforce an anti-replay service with
   the same features as the AH anti-replay service.  The scope of the
   authentication offered by ESP is narrower than for AH, i.e., the IP
   header(s) "outside" the ESP header is(are) not protected.  If only
   the upper layer protocols need to be authenticated, then ESP
   authentication is an appropriate choice and is more space efficient
   than use of AH encapsulating ESP.  Note that although both
   confidentiality and authentication are optional, they cannot both be
   omitted. At least one of them MUST be selected.

   If confidentiality service is selected, then an ESP (tunnel mode) SA
   between two security gateways can offer partial traffic flow
   confidentiality.  The use of tunnel mode allows the inner IP headers
   to be encrypted, concealing the identities of the (ultimate) traffic
   source and destination.  Moreover, ESP payload padding also can be




 
RFC 2401              Security Architecture for IP         November 1998


   invoked to hide the size of the packets, further concealing the
   external characteristics of the traffic.  Similar traffic flow
   confidentiality services may be offered when a mobile user is
   assigned a dynamic IP address in a dialup context, and establishes a
   (tunnel mode) ESP SA to a corporate firewall (acting as a security
   gateway).  Note that fine granularity SAs generally are more
   vulnerable to traffic analysis than coarse granularity ones which are
   carrying traffic from many subscribers.

4.3 Combining Security Associations

   The IP datagrams transmitted over an individual SA are afforded
   protection by exactly one security protocol, either AH or ESP, but
   not both.  Sometimes a security policy may call for a combination of
   services for a particular traffic flow that is not achievable with a
   single SA.  In such instances it will be necessary to employ multiple
   SAs to implement the required security policy.  The term "security
   association bundle" or "SA bundle" is applied to a sequence of SAs
   through which traffic must be processed to satisfy a security policy.
   The order of the sequence is defined by the policy.  (Note that the
   SAs that comprise a bundle may terminate at different endpoints. For
   example, one SA may extend between a mobile host and a security
   gateway and a second, nested SA may extend to a host behind the
   gateway.)

   Security associations may be combined into bundles in two ways:
   transport adjacency and iterated tunneling.

           o Transport adjacency refers to applying more than one
             security protocol to the same IP datagram, without invoking
             tunneling.  This approach to combining AH and ESP allows
             for only one level of combination; further nesting yields
             no added benefit (assuming use of adequately strong
             algorithms in each protocol) since the processing is